There has been 4 holidays in the past two months…Thanksgiving, Water Festival, Christmas, and New Year.

Thanksgiving and the Water Festival were over the same time this year this made it nice for us because we could have off teaching English for both holidays at the same time. We had two days off for the two of them. For the water festival some of our family went down to the river to watch the boat races. We got started late so we only got there in time to watch the last race but it  was still fun watching all the people, especially the Khmer people. They had no idea that we could understand them. Most times they would just start counting. One, two, three… Six Children!! This was surprising for them, but it surprised them even  more when we told them that there was even more at home. Even though we only saw one race we still had a lot of fun.

For Thanksgiving our youth group decided to do a supper for all the staff, and  a few other Khmer people. We spent most of the day setting up for it and getting food ready. While we didn’t have a totally american meal, it was still very delicious and we had a lot of fun with all our friends.

 

 

This December Lori was here for a week and a half. While it didn’t seem like we did that much with her it was a lot of fun having the whole family together for a while again. We had a lot of stuff going right over the time of Christmas.

First came the school children’s Christmas program. They did an excellent job with all their singing and a play about Mr. Scrooge.

 

Christmas Eve we had a very good day that included a Christmas party one of the native families got together in the morning, swimming after lunch:), then our family gift exchange in the evening.

On Christmas day, all of the staff here got together for lunch. After lunch us youth tried to pull taffy. Simply put we made more memories than taffy:)

The Sunday evening after Christmas we had our annual Christmas party in the village. We spent the afternoon setting up, and making food. After the main part of the work was finished we had some time to relax before the party. After the party started there wasn’t time for relaxing any more it was rush rush rush until time to go home. We had a lot more people than we expected would come out. Nobody got a precise count but we know there was close to 250 people there. While having the party was exhausting, it was worth it for the opportunity to tell the Christmas story to so many people.

 

New Years Eve we got together for the evening and to watch the new year come in.

While it has been really busy the past while it doesn’t look like its going to slow down anytime soon, as there is company scheduled to be around from sometime in the next two weeks to the beginning of March. Not all of the company is for our family but it will keep things busy anyhow. One of the nice things  about having company come is that they can bring cards ect. along with them:) So if you wish to send us a card you can either send it to Matthew Millers who leave Ohio the 11th of January…If it doesn’t get there in time there are some youth that from the area that can probably bring it sometime in February. Their address is 7985 SPECHT RD
SUGARCREEK, OH 44681. Or you can send it to my Uncles who are coming the 11th of February their address is 22 Hickory Rd  Bonners Ferry, ID 83805. Thanks to those of you who got cards off in time for when Lori came. We enjoyed them.

Well this will be all for now…Luke for the Helmuths